90s Escort RS2000 stage rally car

Mike set about making his own mark on the car before he started using it (he'd had a 15 year break from rallying so this was his ticket back into it). Like me, he had a bit of a "thing" for the F2 Escorts of the 1990s, so wanted to get a bit of that look into this car. He did actually consider re-shelling it into an old Ford Motorsport press car, but decided to take a slightly lower budget approach, face-lifting the car to MK6 style, and adding a couple of F2 bits too.

So, at the front, the later bonnet/bumper/grill were fitted, along with the Group A type headlamps:



At the rear, a lightweight Ford Motorsport tailgate was fitted, along with the MK6 rear light panels and a replica of the F2 Kit Car rear wing (this is a bit of a marmite thing for obvious reasons!):





The car was then shipped off to a body shop and given a quick blow over in Ford Diamond White to give it a different look:





And back together:







Mike then used the car for a few single venue tarmac rallies in the east of England. With a standard engine and only 150bhp it was never going to win any pots, but it proved pretty reliable, retiring once due to a driveshaft retaining clip failing. Few event pictures:





There was one minor blip at a very slippery Snetterton stages, where he put the car into a wall and I had to help gaffer tape it back together. Still finished though!







So this takes us up to the point where I got the car...

Ok, so with the car in my possession, I had intended to just give it a few teaks and then get on with driving it. One thing I wanted to address was the standard brakes, which are a bit pap. I considered going up to 17" wheels to facilitate this, so I tried a couple on the car:





Certainly emphasised the camber on the front!



But it did highlight a problem. The wide arches had been fitted such that they weren't at all central in relation to the axle lines, as you can see here:









I had never liked the arches, but I had intended to just put up with them to avoid the hassle of changing them, but this was going to be more of a problem, so I decided that I would need to look at changing them. I have since decided to stick with 15" wheels. It looked pretty naughty on 17s, but tyres can be expensive for these, and it is extra weight and doesn't exactly help with the already poor standard gearing.

This is where things very quickly spiraled sadly. The car was "ok", but I started to poke around and found a few wiring issues that I wasn't happy with. Nothing to do with the guy I bought the car from, but a result of numerous people adding and removing bits over the years and just not doing a great job of it. I just couldn't use the car like this, as I am fussy, so decided that, as the interior was looking a bit tired, I would strip it down and give it a lick of paint, as well as addressing the wiring issues. I'm glad I did really, as this uncovered some corrosion issues that would need to be dealt with.

The car, given its age and use, was actually pretty solid generally (impressive for a MK5 Escort) but there were a couple of problem rust areas. The most concerning of these was where the left-hand front roll cage mounting was. When the cage mount had been welded into the car, the fitted hadn't then sealed the floor/sill, meaning water had got in and caused a lot of rot. The floor and sill had actually separated, so the roll cage foot was the only thing holding them together. God knows what would have happened if the car had taken an impact on that side - doesn't bare thinking about. Anyway, this was a pretty awful job but, with the help of a good friend, it was dealt with. No pictures of this, as we just kind of got on with it, but it's done and dusted now.

The other area of rust was on the front bulkhead, and this required quite a lot of rebuilding. So, a picture below of the rust cut out (you can see that the heater blower motor hole has also been filled in):



And then it was repaired:



You can also see to the left of that area, some additional brackets to support the Group A bias pedal box, which has replaced the standard item. This also meant the servo etc could be binned, saving a little bit of weight. Early dummy fit of the pedal box:



Whilst this work was being carried out, the seam welding was extended to the bulkhead and front suspension turrets/chassis rails, as this hadn't been done previously. As well as that, the jacking points were also a bit suspect. At the rear, there was a rather awful towing eye arrangement that comprised of some box section that was welded across the rear panel and to the spare wheel well. The jacking points on the sills had some box section that poked out under the skirts (you can probably see this in some of the earlier pictures. I hated all of this. Some of the modifications that have been carried out to the car were clearly done without much thought and just using whatever materials were laying around, so these were all removed. I decided to take a little inspiration from the F2 cars here. At the front, some box section was welded to the front crossmember. These allow some separate attachments to slot into place, meaning the whole front of the car can be jacked up in one movement. They'll need to be trimmed down once the bumper is on, but here they are:



Next, some proper sill stand points were added. Again, these will need to be trimmed down to suit the sideskirts:



And a picture of an ex-works car to show how the whole deal works:



For the rear, the inspiration from an ex-works car continued, with drop brackets installed that act as towing eyes and a means of jacking the rear of the car:





And that ex-works again:



To be continued some more...

Remember (all those many posts ago) the talk about hating the wide arches? Well, that needed to be addressed in a big way. The front wasn't so difficult. I ordered a set of Escort Cosworth GRP front wings, then drilled out the spot welds and removed the standard steel wings and binned them. An early test fit of the GRP wings, apologies for rubbish pictures taken in the dark:







The rear was a bit tougher. The MSA stipulate that you should keep steel rear quarter panels. I initially thought about fitting some rear arch repair panels to put the rear end back to standard, so I bought a set and started playing. It quickly became apparent that, thanks to the unique (i.e. curse word) way that the extensions had been fitted, that fitting the repair panels was just going to be a total nightmare. The quarter panels had been trimmed back and the extensions just pushed in between the inner and outer arch skins, it was shocking, and really not very strong at all. With all this in mind, I decided to just fit some Cosworth style rear wheel arches. I cut the original arch extensions off and rebuilt the inner arch so that it was actually strong, but didn't worry about making it too pretty. I then bought some GRP Cosworth style rear arches and set about fitting them. They haven't been done to an impeccably high standard, as the car is bound to get damaged at some point, but they will do the job. They are held in place with countersunk rivets and also bonded in place, just to make sure.

Anyway, a few pictures of the fitting process on one side:





Once they were fitted in place, I sanded the edges back to get them to match as closely as possible, and then used the bare minimum of filler to make it look a bit prettier:





The rest of the body work was actually in reasonable condition, so just required a bit of sanding to get it to "good enough", so I was ready to think about paint. Now, sending the car off for a beautiful paint job would have been quite expensive and, given that the car is going to be abused and get scuffed, scratched and dented, paying for an expensive paint job was just pointless. The solution was to get the spray gun out again and to give the car a fresh look, I decided to move away from the white and apply a nice coat of Ford Signal Yellow, as available on the MK2 RS2000. The finish is far from perfect, but it's good enough for what the car will be used for:







Mad to think that this whole thing started with the idea of giving the interior a freshen up isn't it? But, finally, the interior also saw some paint. Frozen white to match the engine bay, but with the front part of the cage in satin black. In this picture, the heavily trimmed and flocked dash has been fitted, along with the front of the cage:





With the outside painted, a few bits could be bolted back on, and the windows refitted:







We're getting there...

Still working away on this...

Got two weeks off over Easter and want to get the rest of the body work sorted out, so I've been trying to get on with some of the fiddly associated jobs. All of this stuff seems to take forever and requires endless little brackets making up, but that's life. First off I made some ally brackets to support the base of the wings to the sill and also the front behind the bumper. No pictures of that, but the wings are no longer floppy.

Next up I fitted the proper front bumper. This had to have the front jacking point holes made in it and I had to make up some brackets to fix it to the wings. I also trimmed the ends down a bit so it matches the Cosworth arch profile a bit better. Thanks to the mismatch of MK5 and MK6, Cosworth and RS2000, not to mention the use of GRP parts, the panel gaps were never going to be perfect, so this has all been done just to keep it simple and fuss-free. The chances of damaging these parts are incredibly high, so I just don't see the sense in spending ages on getting perfect gaps. It just needs to be easy to remove and light. Function over form and all that. The only thing left to do here really is to remove the foam from the front bumper, tidy up some of the brackets and add some little tabs so the bumper just screws on above the jacking points.

Anyway, it's made the front end look a bit more like a car:





Next on the body work hit list was the side skirts. These were fairly simple, just needed a hole putting in them for the sill stand tubes and a bit of trimming to suit the wide front wings. I have since trimmed the sill stand tubes down, as they are still very long in this picture!



You can see at the front where I've been trimming to suit the wings. For some reason I don't have a picture of it finished. You can also see the difference in wheel arch profile from a Cosworth to a normal Escort, with the Cosworth having a longer wheelbase. I will be trimming the arch profile to match the side skirts. This will also gain me some wheel arch clearance which is no bad thing.



The final job was to fit the rear bumper, which took much longer than I thought it would! The rear jacking points mean that the standard bolt positions had to go anyway and I wanted to save some weight, so I spent what felt like an eternity removing foam to be left with this:



Half a bloody black sack full that was...

Anyway, bumper on, secured on a bracket at the top, an M6 on each side and an extra little support bracket to the spare wheel well. It is amazingly flimsy so I suspect I will get through a few of these! Just needs a spot of trimming to match the rear arch profile. Oh, and painting of course...







Rear jacking points/towing hooks are on and bumper required some trimming to accommodate:



Going back a while, Mat Lewis at MDA Motorsport made me a replica Group A pedal box. Mat originally made it with a single return spring for each pedal. The works ones used two springs and, when I put the cylinders in, it did feel like one spring might not be enough, so I modified it to use two. It probably would have been fine to be honest, but I didn't want to have to take it out again, and I can't leave anything on this car alone lol. Anyway, assembled with rebuilt cylinders (again courtesy of MDA) and ready to fit:





So, as of Friday I am off work for two weeks, so the wings will get some final fettling and then I need to get busy prepping and painting. It will never be a concourse car, it's all very rough and ready, but it's built for a purpose. There's lots of nice shiny examples out there, so I will leave that stuff to other people lol.

Oh, one last thing, I fitted some retro rally stickers to my tool box lol.







Nope, still not done yet...

It's update time again. I had two weeks off over Easter so I tried to spend as much time on the car as possible. The aim was to finish off the painting. The shell was actually painted last September but winter meant that I couldn't really finish things off and I had to do a lot of fettling to get everything to fit.

Anyway, on with the show. As I say, the target was to finish off the painting. This entailed quite a lot of work to be honest; just menial, laborious stuff like sanding, so it was a bit dull. As with the rest of the paint work, this is very much being done for a purpose. The finish is far from perfect, but it's good enough for the job and, once there's a few stickers on it, you won't really notice the imperfections anyway.

Started with some quite easy stuff, painting the rear spoiler and rear bumper. With these finished and fitted, the rear end was looking better already. Much better than the yellow/red "Noddy" look in pictures above anyway:



I stripped down the front end and spent a lot of time working on the front wings, firstly to get them to clear the doors when they opened, and also modifying the wheel arch profile to suit my car's odd wheel base length. Cutting the arches wasn't all that fun, but they came out ok. I also painted the bonnet. This hasn't come out all that well to be honest. There was a slight reaction in the paint, so it looks like it has little pin-pricks all over the place. Very odd but, again, with some stickers on it, who cares. Anyway, refitted with catches and washer jets back in:



You can also see that I painted the jacking points red, just because really. The roof vent was also painted and fitted with the obligatory sticker. I don't really like the position of this to be honest, but I didn't want to mess about drilling new holes for it and filling the old ones.



Then we'll just skip to the end shall we?! Wings were finally finished after making side repeater holes, reprofiling arches and doing various other things. Front bumper was painted (and then promptly fell off the stands so had to be painted again) and then the whole lot put on, along with the door mirrors. The panels aren't sitting quite right currently, I need to move the bonnet back a touch so it lines up with the bumper better and I'm waiting for the ally bolts for everything to turn up, but you get the idea. You can also see the vents in the back of the wings too:









The side skirts have been painted but aren't refitted yet. That's a job for the weekend. The headlights are also still missing thanks to the drama with the front bumper. When it all fell over, one of the stands smacked into a headlight casing that was drying near it, promptly taking a couple of big chunks out of the gel coat - bummer. This is going to need a little filler to repair it and I ran out of time to do that. Oh, and I need to fit all the bits of trim to the front bumper too, as it's just the bare shell currently.

Next on the list is to have the gearbox rebuilt with some new gears and my Quaife diff, then the exhaust and engine ancillaries can all go back on, which should help to bring the front end down a little bit. Quite a lot of weight has been lost from the front of the car, so some suspension adjustment will be essential, and I may end up changing the front springs, depending on how it all works out.

We're up to Easter now, not long to go.

Just a small update:

I've made up the lower gearbox mount but not taken any pictures. I've also dropped the gearbox off at a local place to have the diff and final drive from the old box fitted into it, along with these:







MFactory 3rd, 4th and 5th gear which should drop the top speed down to 110-115mph depending on the tyre size. Doesn't sound a lot but more than enough for most rallies and should help the car along a bit. Rarely used to get out of third or fourth so this should help make the post of the few ponies it's got.

I've also bought the warning lights for the dash, some materials to make the interior rear quarter trim panels and dash board inserts and arranged to have a new loom made, so things are getting there.

Once the gearbox is back, that will be fitted so then the shafts can go in, along with the alternator, exhaust rad etc etc.

More to come soon.

More small updates. I had planned to fit the gearbox over the weekend but, after seeing @pauleds experience with his clutch, I've decided to replace it so the box should hopefully go in next weekend. Dropped the front hubs with my friend earlier to have new bearings fitted too, just because.

Did a little work on the inside. Firstly, made an alloy bracket to hold the heater:





Also fitted the carbon centre console and cut-off switch bracket. Obviously this will be furnished with fuses and relays in due course:



Dash is coming together a bit more. I ditched the LHS dash panel and replaced it with a loosely formed version made out of 1mm plastic sheet. Not the prettiest but an awful lot lighter than the standard piece. Also made a blank for the clock at the centre of the dash:



I've made a start on the main dash panel so will try and finish that off this week and also fit the gearbox/uprights/driveshafts hopefully. You can see the column lowering bracket in the picture too, though that column is just a placeholder as I have a lighter version to go in.

Until next time.

Haha thanks. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't gotten a bit carried away!

Just read through this from the start, what a transformation! Impressive amount of work going in will almost be a shame to get it all muddy